A Waif of the Plains eBook

“But I’m coming to see you at—­at
your house, and at the convent,” he said eagerly.
“Father Sobriente and my cousin will fix it all
right.”

But Susy shook her head, with superior wisdom.
“No; they must never know our secret!—­neither
papa nor mamma, especially mamma. And they mustn’t
know that we’ve met again—­aftertheseyears!” It is impossible to
describe the deep significance which Susy’s blue
eyes gave to this expression. After a pause she
went on—­

“No! We must never meet again, Clarence,
unless Mary Rogers helps. She is my best, my
ONLIEST friend, and older than I; having had trouble
herself, and being expressly forbidden to see him again.
You can speak to her about Suzette—­that’s
my name now; I was rechristened Suzette Alexandra
Peyton by mamma. And now, Clarence,” dropping
her voice and glancing shyly around the saloon, “you
may kiss me just once under my hat, for good-by.”
She adroitly slanted her broad-brimmed hat towards
the front of the shop, and in its shadow advanced her
fresh young cheek to Clarence.

Coloring and laughing, the boy pressed his lips to
it twice. Then Susy arose, with the faintest
affectation of a sigh, shook out her skirt, drew on
her gloves with the greatest gravity, and saying, “Don’t
follow me further than the door—­they’re
coming now,” walked with supercilious dignity
past the preoccupied proprietor and waiters to the
entrance. Here she said, with marked civility,
“Good-afternoon, Mr. Brant,” and tripped
away towards the hotel. Clarence lingered for
a moment to look after the lithe and elegant little
figure, with its shining undulations of hair that
fell over the back and shoulders of her white frock
like a golden mantle, and then turned away in the
opposite direction.

He walked home in a state, as it seemed to him, of
absurd perplexity. There were many reasons why
his encounter with Susy should have been of unmixed
pleasure. She had remembered him of her own free
will, and, in spite of the change in her fortune,
had made the first advances. Her doubts about
her future interviews had affected him but little;
still less, I fear, did he think of the other changes
in her character and disposition, for he was of that
age when they added only a piquancy and fascination
to her—­as of one who, in spite of her weakness
of nature, was still devoted to him! But he was
painfully conscious that this meeting had revived
in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense
of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, and which
he thought he had buried at El Refugio four years
ago. Susy’s allusion to his father and
the reiteration of Peyton’s skepticism awoke
in his older intellect the first feeling of suspicion
that was compatible with his open nature. Was
this recurring reticence and mystery due to any act
of his father’s? But, looking back upon
it in after-years, he concluded that the incident
of that day was a premonition rather than a recollection.